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20 Social Media Marketing Tips for Increasing Sales

April 24, 2015

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By: Ievgen Leonov

Marketing manager

AMgrade Solutions LLC

Does social media still work for sales? Sure, it does! More than that, major social networks offer such a vast majority of tools which can be used for leads and sales generation, that NOT using them seems really weird.

Learn how to leverage the potential of social media for your business with the following 20 tips. This is a transcript for the infographic featured in AMgrade's knowledgebase.

TWITTER

With 288 million of monthly active users, Twitter’s sales boosting potential is truly stunning. But if you think creating an account and regular posting tweets will magically skyrocket your sales, you’re sadly mistaken.

Replace quantity with quality. Forge relations only with people, who may be useful to your business (target customers, influencers, competitors etc.). Either you collaborate with them or you learn from them. There should be no in-between.

Be as interactive as possible. Create online surveys, participate in ongoing industry-related conversations and start your own. Ask/give advice, help or opinion. Show the target audience your commitment. Care.

Engagement works only when it’s authentic and transparent. Remember, the point is to shift focus from your business needs to the customer’s problems and interests. Show you’re about to go beyond the transaction. The more time you invest in building relations, the more relevant your product/service will be.

Twitter coupons may help while launching special offers, marketing campaigns via Twitter. Use TwtQpon tool to create coupons, which can be redeemed both online and offline. “Tweet to claim it” function allows online-entrepreneurs to export the list of users, who have claimed the discount, in real time.

Content aggregators can yield benefit too. Define the topics your audience may be interested in and use Zootrock, Swayy or other tools to get and post valuable content via your Twitter.

LINKEDIN

Two new members sign up every second. That’s how a 347 million army of LinkedIn’s active users grows exponentially. Still not impressed? How about the 50% of users, who are more likely to collaborate with a company they engage with on LinkedIn? Here’s how you can use this platform to watch your sales soar.

Add Slideshare to your marketing mix. This LinkedIn owned tool allows not only create and share slide decks, but promote your content and show “the backstage” of the workflow to prospect clients. Besides, the slide decks, created via Slideshare are already SEO optimized.

Upgrade your account. Buying premium account is a thought-out investment for the entrepreneurs, planning to use LinkedIn as sales & promoting platform. Advanced client’s search opportunities, targeted InMails, easy access to the key clients’ latest updates and numerous others useful features will help you to widen the audience and forge relations with the returning customers.

Don’t neglect the opportunities a LinkedIn group can give you. Creating your own field-specific group and regular supplying the valuable content for it is the way not only to extend ties or get sales leads, but to involve influencers and grow the database of potential clients.

Being active in already existing LinkedIn groups allows using them as another promotion foothold. Also, it is an opportunity to skip some restrictions and send direct messages to members of the same group even if you are not the 1st level connection.

LinkedIn is well suited for the reference selling. Just list the clients, satisfied with your product or service, make connections with them on LinkedIn if you still didn’t. Then look through their contacts to find any promising among them and reach those people via Inmail, introduction request or ask your mutual acquaintance for an introduction.

Let the job titles search be your magic wand. If you know your target audience you may define what their job titles may be (at least approximately). Then you just use those titles as search keywords and get the list of users, who may actually join the ranks of your customers.

FACEBOOK

Which social media platform has over 1.35 billion of users worldwide? The right answer is obviously Facebook. This social media titan just can’t be ignored. Use its powers for good — make your sales increase via Facebook.

Stop spamming. Facebook is not the place where hard sell works. You’ve probably already heard about “less is more approach”? It proved successful for millions of webmasters all over the world. The key is to balance valuable and promo content in the ratio 9:1 (90% of posts on your wall should contain information, which may be useful and interesting to your target audience and only 10% should belong to advertising).

Targeted advertising — effective advertising, every webmaster knows that. Choose the criteria, which may be helpful to you and concentrate on them. The most popular and efficient criteria include location, age, and precise interest, connections (increases the click-through rate by converting page fans into buyers), workplace (best for B2B).

Remember, showing the attitude is the key to transforming social media users into customers. So don’t lose the opportunity to use your Facebook page as a customer support tool. Turn it into a place where your audience may leave the feedback or reviews, ask questions, complain or ask for help. Respond to all the comments as quick as possible, showing the customer’s point of view matters.

Facebook users (just like all the rest) enjoy special offers and contests. You may launch your offers both via Facebook and via third-party services (Woobox, CoupSmart, Involver etc). The tools you choose doesn’t really matter, but the engagement increase can really stimulate the sales.

GOOGLE+

Google+ is the joker in the social media pack. It definitely isn’t the most popular network, but the number of benefits it can give an online-entrepreneur, is truly huge. You just have to know how to crack that tough nut.

Personalization. Let your Google+ page introduce your business in the best way. Fill your profile carefully, pursuing three main aims: to make your company’s presentation plain and clear, to add (if possible) links to the content, which will demonstrate your corporate culture, and to create inspiring call to action (to visit your corporate website, for instance).

Google+ communities are no less important than those on LinkedIn. To make them work for your sales you have both to create your own community, make it relevant (that takes a lot of work, but the return, you’ll receive is truly worth it) and participate in already existing top communities (to engage with the people, who may be useful to your business).

Google Hangouts is the way to communicate with your audience and get interaction, which is crucially important to grow the number of sales. That video chat tool can help you in arranging the webinars, holding the opinion polls, providing the users support etc. Consider Google Hangouts as a social media instrument allowing to make your sales more personalized.

Google Authorship is something you shouldn’t pass up. Due to it you can increase your company’s visibility and trustworthiness, to make your content attention-getting, increase click-through rates and get some SEO advances.

Turn the Google+ Events into the analogue of the notification system to your audience. This service allows sending customized invitations to your targeted audience (webinars, special offers, meetings, conferences etc.).